


A Feast for Small Gods

by Brightmorrow, LunarCaustic



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fantasy, Gay yearning, Gods, M/M, Organized Crime, Original Character(s), Original work - Freeform, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Romance, Slow Burn, Urban Fantasy, Violence, indulgent tropes, it's about the hands, local himbo seeks bad boy, star crossed lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:54:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23471278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brightmorrow/pseuds/Brightmorrow, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunarCaustic/pseuds/LunarCaustic
Summary: In a city on a river, full of monstrous humans and little gods, there's a young nobleman about to enter a loveless marriage. From the shadows of the criminal underworld, there's a thief about to steal his heart.There's a greater destiny in store for them both, if the city doesn't devour them first.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 8
Kudos: 12





	A Feast for Small Gods

**Author's Note:**

> Anne: This labor of love has been a work in progress for many months now. We can't promise on-the-dot updates, but we can promise heartfelt material about star-crossed lovers defying the odds. We hope very much that you'll enjoy this work.
> 
> Dea: It's the end of the world so we might as well write a book or something.

The city house practically sparkled, so clean it was in preparation for the ball. The windows, normally grimy even after the most dedicated servants took a turn at washing them, allowed the pale sunlight to filter through with barely a smudge. While he missed the fields and fens of the Hunts’ country holdings where he normally stayed, Kilgalin had to admit that there was something exciting about being in the city. He walked through the corridor toward Sir Garett’s room, not far from his own suite, thinking of his own good fortune. The city was where things happened. The city was where young lords’ fates decided themselves. And tomorrow night, the city would pour out en masse to greet him and his new bride-to-be, the beautiful and vivacious Aria Evenmoore.

“Garett, please -” He stopped, instantly turning brilliantly red as he realized what he’d walked in on - his head guardsman obviously abed with some woman, and having a rousing good time despite it being gone nine in the morning. He made to quickly shut the door, excusing himself silently, but then - 

“Oh, yes, do that again -” a too-familiar voice came from under his guard’s body and bedsheets, and a braid of hair even brighter gold than his own spilled out across the pillow. 

“A- Aria?” he asked, voice catching on the sound of her name, and the world stopped, just for a moment, as her hazel eyes peered at him from over Garett’s broad shoulder. 

“Game’s over,” she said, pushing Garett ungently off of her. He tumbled to the side of the bed, baring her body for just a moment, and Kilgalin hurried to avert his eyes, cheeks still burning. She snatched up the blanket with a queenly air and covered herself, leaving the guard to grope for his breeches as he stumbled onto the cool tile floor. 

“My Lord,” Garett stuttered, stepping into his trousers blindly but not meeting Kilgalin’s eye. 

“Dismissed, Garett.” 

The guard made a speedy exit, leaving them alone in the room. Kilgalin took a deep breath through his nose and instantly regretted it, the smell of sex heavy in the air, touched by Aria’s expensive perfume. He felt like vomiting. Or crying. Both, maybe. His eyes stung like they did when he walked out into the winter air at Hunt Manor for the first deep freeze. They stung like he was a boy, a simple, stupid boy who’d thought himself lucky, favored even, to have been betrothed to someone so full of life, so sweet and pretty - 

“Aren’t you going to say something?” She demanded, almost bored-sounding.

“Aria?” he asked again, begging her to tell him his eyes were deceiving him. He’d believe her, he would, if only she’d give him a fitting explanation. “Did he - Garett, did he force himself -?” 

“If he had,” Aria said bitingly, “ do you think I would have gone to the trouble of hiding it? I thought you were out riding.” 

“I was,” Kilgalin said flatly. “The Fellow threw a shoe. So you mean to tell me that -” 

“That you have utterly ruined my morning? Yes.”

She didn’t even sound vaguely guilty about it. 

“But - we’re - engaged,” he managed, struggling to form the words around the lump in his throat. 

“Come now Kay, you know that ours is a marriage of houses, not people.” 

“It very much feels like a marriage of people,” Kilgalin protested, the words hotter and stronger than he expected them to be. 

“That’s your fault, isn’t it? I tried to tell you before -” 

“Is this - is this why your prior engagement fell apart? You told me it was an  _ incompatibility of spirit. _ ”

“And it was!” Aria exclaimed, pulling the sheets up higher as she sat straighter in Garett’s bed, every inch the noble woman even in her moment of shame. “You don’t have to act so prudish about it.”

“I’m not -” 

“ I thought you would be different,” she admitted with a sort of sadness in her voice. “Because of your… roots, you know.” 

“My roots?” Kilgalin demanded, coloring up all over again. He knew to what she referred, the whispers about his birth father and the mysterious way he’d disappeared, leaving Kilgalin and his mother alone in the world when he was young. He hadn’t known Aria could be so cruel, though. He hadn’t expected the honeyed tongue he’d grown quickly to love to cut like a knife through him at a moment’s notice. 

“It’s too bad. You could have been such fun, if they had left a bit of the commoner in you.” 

A wave of nausea washed over him, and he had to pinch the tender skin between his thumb and forefinger to keep from spilling over right there in front of her. “Is this -” he stumbled, trying to hope but failing. “Was this - do you… care… for Sir Garett?” 

“Of course not.” Aria rolled her eyes and busied herself pinning her thick braid to her head in a coronet, her breasts covered by Garett’s sheet. 

Even as he began to ask, Kilgalin knew the answer to his next question. “Do you care at all for me?” 

“Oh Kilgalin,” she said, almost sorrowfully, and gave him a look of such pity that he was sure he’d never erase the sting from his heart. “I hardly know you. How am I to care about someone I’ve only met weeks ago?”

“I would have been a good husband to you,” Kilgalin said almost desperately. He raked a hand through his hair, and her countenance shifted. Just for a moment he saw her desperation, too - like the face of a prisoner as the barred door slammed shut. It lasted only a second before she schooled her face into a clean, pretty smile with just a hint of an edge.

“I’m sure you’ll be the nicest husband I could ask for. And what’s more, we’ll have beautiful children, and maybe your horrid old stepfather will die before they get too old, and we’ll live in this nice city house.” 

“What?”

“Well, you can’t back out of our deal now, my dear.” She went back to pinning her hair, too distracted to look him in the eyes. Or maybe she just didn’t want to. “Just think - the ball is tomorrow night, and Lord Hunt has gone to so much trouble. He’s invited half the nobility and made enemies of the other half. If we call it off, they’re all sure to know you’re to blame; I could hardly end another engagement and everyone knows it. Do you want to be banished away from your family so soon?” 

Kilgalin stared at her in dumbfounded awe as she doomed him to a life of utter misery without a blink of her long eyelashes. 

“Besides, you know as well as I do that the Hunts need Evenmoore money if they’re to continue playing court the way they have been. I’m the richest girl in three kingdoms and the only one willing to marry a common-born stepson.” 

“And… what do you get out of this… arrangement?” Kilgalin asked, almost numb to the pain by now. Almost. 

“I get the same thing you get, my dear,” Aria said quietly. “I get a home of my own to command, with you. I get out from under my mother’s thumb, as you escape your stepfather. I get to share my bed with whomever takes my fancy, as do you. And above all, I get to be free.” 

“Free from what?” Kilgalin asked, unable to help himself. 

“If you have to ask me that, I’m not the only one you’re lying to about how happy you are.” 

Kilgalin bit the inside of his cheek until it burst painfully between his teeth, the bright, sharp taste of his own blood staining his tongue. 

“Happiness isn’t something I ever expected anyway,” he admitted. For the first time since they met weeks before, he felt like they were on the same page. 

It was just too bad it had to be this book. 

“Garett is my friend,” he explained shortly. “Please - whatever you do, not… not with him.” 

“Is there anyone else you’re putting off the table?” Aria asked, hazel eyes looking older in her young face. 

Kilgalin thought about it for a moment, but he already knew his answer. “I don’t have anyone else.” 

With that, he bowed and excused himself. Out in the hall, Garett looked painfully aware of his shirtlessness. 

“My Lord,” he said stiffly, but Kilgalin shook his head. Garett breathed a small sigh - of relief, maybe, but maybe not. “Kay, I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking -” 

“Not again, Garett.” Kilgalin turned and headed toward his room, his hair mussed from his hand. Garett easily kept up with his longer stride, having had years of practice. 

“You aren’t dismissing me then?” he asked quietly. 

“What reason would I give?”

“I - Oh.” 

“Exactly.” 

“But we’re still -” 

Kilgalin stopped in front of his door, turned, and looked Garett in the eyes. His pain had subsided some in the face of all of Aria’s honesty, but looking at his guard - his friend, his one true friend, who had betrayed him at the first opportunity - it came rushing back. 

“Don’t do it again, huh?” he asked, clapping Garett on the shoulder with a bit more force than was necessary. 

“Kilgalin, I -” 

But the closing of the heavy door cut him off, and for a moment, there was nothing but quiet as Kilgalin sank to the floor, large hands covering his face. 

_ What have they gotten me into? _

≈≈≈

As they rowed out from the smuggler’s cove, the River Grim watched him from the water. 

No moon shone that night, and the lights of the city did not reach so far past the shore. This far down from the last docks, the great river reflected only the silvered black of the sky. Darkness lapped at their rowboat, and their cloth-wrapped oars muffled what little sound their passing made as they rowed to deeper water. 

The River Grim never moved; or, Mockingbird never saw it move. But no matter how he kept his gaze on the horse-creature, it was always the same distance ahead of them. He was used to the tricks the small gods played on the senses and didn’t puzzle over it. 

Only its dark head showed above the water, so gaunt it was little more than skin stretched over a narrow equine skull. A long, oily black mane floated on top of the waves, and the eyes it fixed on Mockingbird were fishbelly white.

The god that the denizens of the city called the River Grim was a patron of death, guiding the souls of the drowned and the murdered, the ones whose bodies were dumped into the river on moonless nights such as this. Those who did the dumping also claimed that it took the dead as offerings, and would cloak its followers in shadows and silence if showed the proper respect.

Rogues were surprisingly devout, just not to the sort of gods anybody wanted to acknowledge.

Goshawk had already muttered a prayer to the River Grim as they’d loaded up the rowboat with their bloody cargo, and perhaps that was enough to summon it. Mockingbird’s partner for the night was normally a smuggler, so he certainly knew his business. His powerful arms were a testament to the many nights he’d spent rowing out onto the river, and he guided the boat with barely a splash. 

“You gonna help me with this stiff, or just keep sittin’ pretty?”

Goshawk had stopped rowing, evidently judging them to be far enough from shore. The little boat bobbed on the water as the big man started to haul the wrapped bundle of the corpse up from its bottom.

“Shut up,” Mockingbird said automatically, breaking his stare with the god. They were not the only ones out on the Perron tonight, and voices carried across the water. Goshawk may think the River Grim would protect them, but Mockingbird knew they were still vulnerable. Only one god would cast its blessing over him- and it wasn't this one.

But Goshawk was human, and godblind, and couldn’t see the way the River Grim hung back, refusing to come near them. Couldn’t see the way it stared at Mockingbird. 

The body was heavy, wrapped with stones to weigh it down. Mockingbird wasn’t even half the size of Goshawk, and he struggled to lift the corpse and keep his balance. The smuggler snorted a laugh. 

“You sure you’re cut out for these jobs?”

“More’n you know,” Mockingbird muttered, distracted. A flash of white over the water had caught his eye, as a receding wave revealed an exposed set of teeth in the River Grim’s jaw.

“You ask me, you should stick to warmin’ the boss’s bed-”

Mockingbird moved without thinking, dropping the body and drawing his knife. He was on Goshawk before the man could react, fisting his hand in the smuggler’s shirt and pressing the point of his knife to his cheek, where it scraped dangerously against the bone.

“Keep talkin’ and I’ll toss your eyes in after this corpse,” he hissed.

Goshawk’s smirk was gone, and his wide eyes flicked from the knife to Mockingbird’s face, the only bit of him that moved while he tried to decide how serious Mockingbird was. 

For several long moments, his body was tensed, and Mockingbird thought Goshawk would try to use his larger frame to overpower him, blade or no. He was ready for that- welcomed it, even, ready to make good on his threat- but instead Goshawk relented, lifting his open hands just a little in a gesture of surrender. 

“Easy, Mockingbird, t’was only a joke,” he said in a mollifying tone. “No need to get violent.”

“Let’s just get back to work.”

He tried to shake off the anger as he retreated back to the other end of the boat, sheathing his knife up his sleeve. If he had learned anything after all his years in the Flock, as the youngest, the weakest, and the only half-elf, it was that you never let an insult slide. Your reputation was your armor, and you did whatever you needed to do to keep it intact. He had to prove that there were consequences for that kind of talk, and he was willing to dole them out. 

Still, there’d be hell to pay if he doused their best smuggler. Goshawk wasn’t worth that punishment.

Together, they raised the body clear of the boat and lowered it quietly into the river. Cool water soaked the sleeves of his jacket as the body slipped beneath the surface, falling fast into the depths. Mockingbird tried to feel something for the man he had killed, whose only mistake had been taking bribes from the wrong people, but he couldn’t muster up anything. Not regret, not sympathy, not shame.

He just wondered what the River Grim did with their offerings.

As Goshawk started to row them back, the god gave him one last pitiless look and sunk below the water, diving down after the dead. 

**Author's Note:**

> We thrive on feedback. Please feel free to leave comments!


End file.
